


don't die so far from the sea

by upottery



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-01-25
Packaged: 2017-11-26 19:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/upottery/pseuds/upottery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Stiles will skip rocks and talk about nothing in particular, and sometimes Derek will set down his jacket and they will sit together just out of the water’s reach, and sometimes Derek will speak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't die so far from the sea

**Author's Note:**

> upon making friends with people i almost always ask if they would like a fic written for them. this one is for my friend [emily](http://sonnyscorleone.tumblr.com), and i wrote gratuitous scenes of the ocean. i got the title from a game of thrones quote, hilariously enough.

The foam that gathers between the stones has small bubbles that are innumerable, a mosaic straight from nature, from her own bosom where she keeps the nearly invisible-but most beautiful-secrets of the earth. The rocks cling to the sea, more and more of their hardened surfaces sluicing away, brown sediment leaning into dark bluish and unblemished pebbles, lovely in their vulnerability. Underneath a century’s worth of gathered weight, the saltiness of the water and its persistent sway break down every cemented barrier, and the rocks keep coming and keep letting themselves be smoothed.

-

Stiles gets a fond look on his face whenever he first steps foot over the dunes, sand gathering near his toes inside his shoes, and he never fails to grimace for a few seconds at the grating feeling of it. In an instant he lifts his gaze to the breeze, wind whipping through the trees behind him, a chorus whistling with green tones that call him back to their separate world. There’s a reason he’s here, though, breathing in air that has so long floated over the sea, smelling not entirely unpleasant. 

Derek comes through the thin forest a few seconds later, and Stiles turns his head to smile with gusts roaring past his ears. He watches the tense muscles of Derek’s shoulders relax, and then his whole posture loosens as he closes his eyes. He told Stiles once about how it felt, that first breath of the ocean, said the salt stung in his nose and it was almost overpowering, but how that was the whole point, smelling nothing but. Derek was almost asleep then, delirious and mumbling, but Stiles knows it’s the complete truth with one look. 

Every couple of days, for a while now, they have come here, and hour and a half by the jeep, forty-five minutes in the Camaro, but they always use the jeep. Stiles gripes about the gas most of the way there, but he does it because Derek isn’t listening, instead he has his head pillowed on the window with Stiles’s Derek Playlist playing in Stiles’s headphones. The playlist gets more songs every time Derek grumbles, usually requests, but sometimes he lets Stiles pick a few.

It starts when Derek gives him any variety of particular expressions, exasperated and irritated or any combination of emotions that Stiles interprets as “The Look”, and it has him garmenting another layer and fumbling for his keys. It may not surface for weeks at a time, or it could show up two days after their last visit, but Stiles isn’t one to question its frequency. The beach has effects on both of them, and it’s positive enough to warrant them returning continuously. 

The first time they went was because Stiles was thoroughly convinced that after lizards and werewolves, mermaids almost certainly had to exist. They explored the public beach, and there was screaming children and other various calamities. Derek was tricked and angry because Stiles had promised to put a good word in for Derek to try and persuade Scott to join Derek’s pack in turn for his participation in that wild goose chase. Stiles still laughs about it now.

Except then Stiles kept tricking Derek into visiting the shore, and Derek had even begun to not mind it as much. That was until one trip left them on the edge of the road beside Stiles’s broken down jeep. That was the day they found the perfect patch of land, with no distraught kids or rogue sandcastles. Stiles had seen the fence and it’s clear “keep out” warning sign. He told Derek he could smell the ocean from there, just over that fence, he promised. 

Seven minutes of arguing about their questionable joint experiences with the law, Derek was suddenly hefting Stiles over the wire, surreptitiously not rolling his eyes until Stiles basically fell off the other side. The forest on past the boundary was not dense, and Derek led Stiles to the sea. Their first sight of it was awe inspiring, the sunset just dripped down below the horizon, late afternoon light gleamed off the rocky shore. The waves crashed audibly, the kind that people recorded for nature soundtracks.

That first day, Stiles got into his bed at four in the morning, still wearing Derek’s leather jacket. They haven’t been to the public beach since.

And even now, that first view silences both of them. The pebbles in the gravelly sand are bluer than Stiles remembers, the sun so bright that the water looks as blue as the pebbles. It’s still surreal, a year later. A year of exhausted periods between these hours, battle-weary and too young for it. A year of blurs that lead up to this shore and these foamed breakers, Stiles honored that Derek would share this private place with him.

Despite Derek never saying anything about it, Stiles knows how much this beach matters to him.

Stiles walks down to the rocks, Derek trailing after him, the scent of salt getting heavier, but impossibly fresh, as if it wanted to invite them down to the rolling water. When they get there, waves grasping out to Stiles’s shoes, they do what they have done for the past year, and stand. 

Sometimes Stiles will skip rocks and talk about nothing in particular, and sometimes Derek will set down his jacket and they will sit together just out of the water’s reach, and sometimes Derek will speak. Derek hasn’t spoken more than five times this whole year, and each time Stiles reached out and held his hand and said nothing.

They stand, shoulders brushing, for what seems like hours, and before he can stop himself, Stiles tentatively wraps his fingers around Derek’s. The ocean tosses its weight, waves making thunder against the bluffs a hundred yards away.

And the first words out of Derek’s mouth are telling Stiles about how the air tastes of salt on the back of his tongue. 

-

No matter how far the rocks edge up the shore, and no matter how low the tides get, the waves will continue to reach all of them, holding them for brief moments and unearthing their even surfaces as time goes by.


End file.
